Category: Toys

My daughter spotted some fabric hanging over the bannister and said it was her “favourite”! I asked her if she would like me to make her something, she said yes – an apron.

As we all know, two year olds can be pretty fickle when it comes to “favourites” but she has been mentioning aprons for some time because she wants to help bake cakes (not something I do so frequently any more but I’ll indulge her). She has helped me twice before with cakes and each time I just pegged a tea towel around her neck…

I set about making a template for the apron and kind of made it up as I went along. I ordered some herringbone webbing in different colours so that my daughter could choose which one she wanted on the apron. I bought red, light blue and beige. When I showed them to her and asked her what colour she wanted, she said PINK! Oh…

I opted for red because I thought it would look great. I finished the apron and presented daughter with it. She said “Not pink. No like it”. Mum is slightly disappointed here kiddo…

Anyway she wore it happily (see photo). I then realised I’d made it a bit too short and I also had to put velcro in the neck strap because otherwise the front would have been quite low in order for it to fit over her head.

I bought a doll bed for my daughter from Ikea. The bedding which came with it was functional but not very inspiring and didn’t go with the colour scheme in her room (the bedding was blue) so I decided to make a mini quilt.

This was definitely a Missouri Star Quilt Company tutorial.

The photo is awful but you can just about make out my dreadful first attempt at free motion quilting…

After buying quite a lot of material for the blinds I had some left over. I have since seen this pattern back in John Lewis and it is their Little Home range, Birds and Buttons I found instructions online to make a beanbag. As you will see, I think I was inspired to make this on because it was similar colours to the fabric I had left over from the blinds. I think it took longer than 30 minutes to make but anyone who is used to putting zips in things will probably do this a lot quicker. I also made a lining bag out of calico so that I could unzip the cover and wash it. Obviously this added to the time it took to make it.

This was quite simple to make and I was really pleased with the result. I would say the hardest thing was getting the polystyrene balls into the bag to go inside!!! Also I over filled it so it was quite firm at first but it is softening up now. My daughter does love to run and jump into it. It is very comfy now and I sit on it next to my daughter’s bed to read her bedtime story.

I have seen lots of lovely tepees and wanted to have a go at making one. We were decorating our daughter’s bedroom and the curtains, which, for some reason, didn’t fit the track properly, we’re going to be replaced with blinds. So the curtains were surplus to requirements. I decided there was enough fabric to make a tepee and I found a book which had instructions on how to make it. I was sewing until 1 o’clock in the morning…

It worked really well but I can’t get it to stay up! I tried to tie string around the top but that didn’t help. Does anyone have any ideas? Also the doors at the front don’t meet and if they did, the tepee would be so upright, there would hardly be any room inside it.

I am happy with how it turned out though. Perhaps I’ll add a floor or extra bits on the doors later.

I now have my very own sewing machine. The world is my oyster in terms of what I can make! My daughter has a small cloth duck which she has when she goes to sleep at night and I wanted to make a small stuffed toy for her. I trawled the internet and finally found something which looked easy. It wasn’t too bad but it came up too small so I had to size it up by half again (trying to remember GSCE maths!). I managed to size it up successfully and I made my first stuffed toy. A pink elephant. The ears were supposed to be made of felt but I didn’t have any so these are double fabric sewn on. My hand sewing leaves a lot to be desired.

Unfortunately my daughter isn’t interested in it but I was very chuffed at my first attempt!